13th Black Defect
by Dummy Perception
Summary: "You wake up in a dream. And indeed, have you lost your sanity?"


"_In the end, this is the truth: humans are really frail beings. They can be so stupid, so weak, and because of their weakness, they end up hurting each other. They want more power to protect themselves, and they use it against those who's weak. It's the only way the humans know to feel safe."_

– _Freezing [manga] chapter 89_

* * *

"You wake up in a dream. And indeed, have you lost your sanity?

* * *

You need souls to keep on living.

It's as necessary as having to eat, drink, and sleep everyday.

What? You're not certain with what souls really are? You're supposed to learn them in preschool. You even have one yourself. Oh, how do they look like? *chuckle* of course you don't see them easily, silly. They're usually red or blue. And they glow.

Yesss. How about you try to take that girl's soul? You see it don't you?

Why is it wrong? The blue ones actually give more power, you know?

How is it wrong?

Well, just because kishins get to collect souls when alone doesn't mean their souls happen to be stronger, either.

They do that to keep their souls in control.

Too bad the prey had to be too easy.

You still don't understand? What do they teach you at the academy anyway?

To put it simply, the kishins get the strongest (but mostly deformed) body, but very weak souls, while the 'pure' ones contained power that are mostly unused, and a very fragile container that breaks on a fall from half the whole height of a staircase.

It's still a wonder how those weak mortals could hold such strong souls.

Well, they say that the strength came from the former inhabitants of the soul, and as the soul gets to have more bodies, it gets to be stronger.

But that was too long, so some idiot decided that merging souls together – and forcefully at that – could make things faster for growing power. Or so they said.

What I meant with the red soul being a weaker one is this: its occupied body uses too much power that when discharged from the body it's already weak to the point that it's as useful as wafts of air, so when consumed, only gave a third of its power the formerly living body used to have with it within. The blue ones, on the other hand, don't use their powers so much that they get accumulated in the soul, it's dormant.

But here's the real story: It's probably some half-truth though, as I haven't seen it first hand.

* * *

_That's why the weak red souls have to consume the more power charged batteries-the blue ones- In order to maintain their power at the same time gain more. And because the blue soul containers are so fragile that they get easily destroyed upon severe blade contact; that is, when the assailant really intends to kill the container, they die and their soul no longer stays inside; but the power remains._

_Hah, talk about 'human potential'._

_It is also because of this that the containers of the red souls and the blue soul containers have great differences in lifespan. Red soul containers get to have the longer life, given that they get their supply of energy for their souls to use for energy expenditure. The blue soul containers get the short life but the much stronger soul. Their souls get to last an eternity or so, so the souls sometimes get transferred to another fragile body, and the cycle goes on._

_But lately there had been interventions._

_Only blue souls used to exist, did you know that?_

_But red souls started to emerge when the containers of some of the blue souls started to fear that their souls would get to leave them too soon, and they did not want that. Some moron theorized [so he must have been a genius] that if he had another soul in his body, then he would not have to worry about his own soul leaving him, for he'd still have something left for his body to house. So he killed his wife and only child and took their souls. He felt a lot better after that, because of the fact that he already had prepared himself._

_First attempts often fail. Having three souls inside him only hastened his demise. They say that the souls were too powerful for a single body to handle, so they sort of performed a short fuse and resonated badly. Yup, they 'exploded' inside him. So without a soul to occupy him, the container died._

_But that was the old belief. The truth was, the moment those two souls entered the human's body his soul's color changed. Since he had not consumed any more, this tainted soul died. That was the birth of the first blood soul._

_Upon witnessing this death, the people feared, and no one did something like that again for a long time._

_And then this man came to the villagers. He suffered a lot, in ways nobody knew._

_One day, he decided that he no longer wanted to be reborn everytime, with the same sorrow. And he has heard of what happened to that 'genius'._

_So he waited for someone to die._

_As the blue soul traveled to its next host, the man chased it, grabbed it, and ate his first soul. He soon felt the pain in his chest. He thought that he was dying, when he suddenly felt better. He needed more, he thought. Maybe one wasn't enough to detonate._

_Soon he felt more pain in his chest, but no one shall die anytime soon. He was scared of dying this time, without killing his soul. He didn't want to relive this kind of life. He thought he was mercy killing._

_Because, you see, they say that the soul tends to use the containers that resemble each other in some way, so that it won't have any difficulty in synchronizing with the body. So the next container that this man's soul goes to might become like him: a sorrowful one._

_And he thought that his soul already needed rest._

_So he killed his neighbor, one after another. Soon the village was empty._

_But his soul did not detonate, nor did he die._

_But he did succeed in killing his soul._

_Because, you see, his soul will no longer be able to go to another body; it has latched itself unto the container, and the container in return, which has gone beyond its expiration, consumed more of the soul's essence. The man grew stronger and more dangerous._

_He kept on devouring soul after soul, and destroyed village after village, in hopes of having his soul explode or wither away soon. He sure was wrong, his soul tried to survive instead for a price._

* * *

So you should eat a lot of these souls in order to get some nourishment. Look, your food's gone. So, I think you'll just have to go for the one next to it, although I doubt that it gives as much nourishment, I guess? Oh, the things we do to survive… even having rats for dinner just to put hunger off a little.

With nothing better to do, she did what was asked of her.

Soon, she was holding an orb of light, with a shade of crimson similar to that of the liquid that got unto the hand she was holding it with. A grin came to her lips, and upon instinct, lifted the soul upwards…


End file.
